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Table of Contents
07 : Blog
Thu 27/03/25 : A 60m SSB QSO
I'm making an effort to pick up the mic and have SSB contacts and I've had my first one of the year on 60m.
Listening on 5320kHz I heard a weakish CQ call from M0JMV and replied a few times, but no joy… then I was called by G4MQL, with a 59 signal report (both ways).
It still feels a little alien speaking rather than typing or sending dots and dashes but it somehow transports me back to when I first got interested in radio back in the 1980s and got my callsign. Why have I largely ignored 'phone modes in the last 20 years?
I will have more SSB contacts. I have even put my morse keys and bugs away for a while and am waiting for delivery of a new HF radio, FT-891, bought with the express intention to use it purely for SSB.
I've been using the 60m band since we first got access via a Notice of Variation, but 90% of this has been in digimodes (mostly Olivia) with some CW and a little SSB.
But…. I'm also interested in the use of 60m for “normal” phone QSOs - I listen a LOT to 60m SSB operation, be it amateur or commercial/aeronuatical (and in the past to the Cadets, where have they all gone??) I now want to get more involved in things instead of listening/watching from the sidelines.
Onwards and upwards.
Sun 09/03/25 : A New Blogging platform?
I've recently (yesterday, Saturday 8th March) set up a blogging platform on my Virtual Private Server.
I came across
- A dokuwiki https://wiki.millerjs.org/start
- A separate blog by the same person https://millerjs.org/
I was struck that he had both a blog and a wiki .
I've thought of doing the same, rather than using dokuwiki as the method of writing blog posts. I've always avoided it, as I think something like wordpress would be too large and cumbersome to install and to learn, for my miniscule blogging efforts.
After some searching I worked out that the blog was running on chyrp-lite https://chyrplite.net/ and that it appeared to be straightforward to install on a server that already had working Apache and PHP. It can be configured to use a simple sqlite3 database file if you don't want to install and configure a full-blown MySQL database server.
Installation
I downloaded the current version from github https://github.com/xenocrat/chyrp-lite/releases/tag/v2025.01.01 using wget on my VPS
wget https://github.com/xenocrat/chyrp-lite/archive/refs/tags/v2025.01.01.tar.gz
I un-tarred it, and then copied the whole directory to the webserver document root…
Then began a few minor problems….
- I had to enable
PDOin the PHP.ini file - I had to install
php-sqlite3 - I had to install
php-mbstring - I had to
chownvarious directories in thechyrpdirectorychown -R www-data:www-data chyrp-lite - I had to make a separate directory
chyrp-lite-datain/var/www(i.e. outside the webserver document root which is/var/www/html/) to hold the sqlite database andchown -R www-data:www-data chyrp-lite-datatoo. - Then the
install.phpprocess eventually completed correctly and I have a workingchyrp-liteblog
My Chyrp-Lite blog
https://gm4slv.org.uk/chyrp-lite/
After adding a few posts, I think that, yes, it's a nice simple but usable blogging platform. It does enough for my needs.
But… it's a different markup language to the one used in DokuWiki - and I've become very comfortable here that I might not want to have to learn a different markup just for blogging. This split between wiki and blog also spreads content and information between 2 different places - is it better to keep it all in one place?
So…
I've decided to stick to dokuwiki and its Blog Plugin for blogging - I don't do much, and many things I might want to write about would end up here in dokuwiki anyway.
I'll leave the chyrp-lite installation for a while but it might disappear at any time.
UPDATE 15/03/25
I've deleted the chyrp-lite blog installation after making a copy and storing it in case I want to resurrect it.
Sun 09/03/25 : Tweaking The Blog Setup
I've added a config value for the blog plugin
dateprefix ⇒ %Y:
This should make a sub-namespace of (e.g.) public:blog:2025 and each year's blog entries will be together in one year's sub-namspace.
Thu 08/08/24 : Zettelkasten
I'm getting interested in the Zettelkasten concept again…. after looking at it last year.
I'm starting to put together some references
Thu 01/08/24 : DM41X
Calculators
I've had the DM41X homage/clone of the HP41CX for a few years now, and after an initial period where I learned some of its features and explored a some plugin modules I found it a little cumbersome with the frequent need to explicitly spell out XEQALPHAFACTALPHA the function required. In the HP41 the keys can be remapped using the USER keyboard assignment, but there are only so many unused keys to play with.
I've recently been looking at it again, and (if I can get used to the classic 41 placement of the arithmetic keys + - x ÷ ) I'm planning a month or two only using the DM41X.
It's a remarkable device. The underlying HP41CX and modules are remarkable in their own rights, and various DM41X specific features extend the usability greatly e/g. CST menu, with the ability to save and recall multiple CST configurations means regularly used functions can be much easier to access - as well as one's own programs.
I love the DM42 and DM32, as well as the DM15L of course, but the DM41X is capturing my attention at the moment, so I'll have a trip down the '41 rabbit hole for a few weeks I think.